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Saturday, November 24, 2018

A Thousand Drumsticks on the Hoof’

We’ve all heard of Old West cattle
drives, but did you ever hear of a turkey drive?

If you'd raised turkeys during the early
nineteenth century and wanted to get them to market in time for Thanksgiving or
Christmas, there was only one way to do it; you had to walk them.

Before refrigerator boxcars and
trucks, drovers herded turkeys thousands of miles to markets and rail-heads. They
crossed mountains, plains and deserts.

In 1863 Horace Greenley walked five
hundred turkeys from Iowa to Colorado, a trek of six hundred miles.His wagon was packed with corn and drawn by
six horses and mules, but his turkeys grew fat by devouring grasshoppers.

Greeley wasn’t the only one with a
long trek. It once took a year for a breeding herd to be driven from New Mexico
Territory to California. Some farmers
hired boy drovers to help keep the feathered hikers in line, others used dogs.

CourtesyW.Virginia and Regional Historic Collection, WVU Libraries

Turkeys are temperamental birds, but
they are fast walkers.With no
distractions, the wind behind them and a certain amount of luck, they can travel
twenty-five miles a day.They also have
strange habits. One early drover complained that if his turkeys had a mind to,
they would bed down at three in the afternoon and nothing or no one could
change their minds.

Cattle had nothing on turkeys as far
as stampedes were concerned.A rifle
shot, howling coyote or flutter of paper could put drumsticks on the run.One poor drover herding his rafter of turkeys
through town had to give chase when a streetlight turned on.

Turkeys liked to roost in trees, but
roofs were favored, too. Sometimes with disastrous results.When a flock traveling from Vermont to Boston
roosted on a schoolhouse, the roof caved in and the late-working schoolmaster
barely escaped with his life.Another
flock flew onto the roof of a toll bridge and the drover’s profits went toward
replacing the roof.

Turkey
farmers have it easy today in comparison and, so for that matter, do we.Now we can enjoy our Thanksgiving dinner
without having to worry about the roof caving in.

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